Bachelor of Science Game Design

The BS in Game Design prepares students to become storytellers, critical thinkers, entrepreneurs, and leaders in the field of games. Students collaborate in interdisciplinary teams with programmers, artists, and musicians to master the iterative development process and create polished experiences. Students build a portfolio showcasing their skills developing AAA, indie, and art games, as well as transformative play experiences on established and emerging platforms including augmented and virtual reality, tabletop, and physical technology.

DePaul’s game design programs are nationally recognized.
The Princeton Review ranked our undergraduate program #28 on its list of the Top 50 Undergraduate Schools to Study Game Design in 2018, and
Animation Career Review ranked DePaul #7 nationally in their Top 50 Game Design Schools of 2018.

Careers

Recent graduates of CDM’s game program have gone on to work at Disney Consumer Products and Interactive Media, NeatherRealm Studios, Owlchemy Labs, Firaxis, Wargaming, Phosphor Games, and many others.

Several grads have gone on to form their own gaming companies, including Young Horses, whose indie hit
Octodad was developed at DePaul.

Game Design Student Reel

Doris is a game designer, researcher, and play aficionado who directs the Deep Games Lab. Her work and research focuses primarily on games that reflect the human experience and can be used for mental health activism.

Brian is the author of
Avant-gardeVideogames:
Playing with Technoculture, and the director of the Virtual and Augmented Design Lab. Most recently, he co-curated the “Hey! Play! Games in Modern Culture” exhibit at the Chicago Design Museum.

Allen is the former Lead Designer and Game Director at Wideload Games/Disney Interactive Studios. He is a faculty mentor for the Interdisciplinary Design program, a partnership with the Chicago Housing Authority.

Anna, our Game Designer in Residence, is an independent game designer of both digital and tabletop games, writer, and game historian. Her published books include
Rise of the Videogame Zinesters,
A Game Design Vocabulary (co-authored with Naomi Clark), and
ZZT.

Our newest game lab VAD hosts classes and projects to research and develop experimental games on emerging platforms. Current lab works includes AR development with Apple pushing the affordances of the ARKit on iPhone, and a VR game project exploring deformable virtual surfaces via hand and foot trackers.

Housed in CDM, the Deep Games Laboratory focuses on the design, research, and assessment of games that explore the human experience. Students and faculty in the lab create games that reflect social struggles.